I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a clutch mechanism couplable to door locks with a locking bolt operated by handles or knobs, which incorporates notable advantages compared to mechanisms currently existing and having the same end, and has certain narrow dimensions in order to prevent the mechanism from significantly projecting with respect to the doors in which it is fitted, and that it may include a minimum number of pieces and be able to be used both in a normal position and reversed position so that it can be adapted to any type of door, thus enabling assembly advantages that lead to economic advantages.
All the component elements are interconnected together in such a way that there is no weakening of the mechanism and the mechanism is very compact.
II. Description of the Related Art
Basically two inventions make up the prior art. These two devices are described in EP patent 0848779 U.S. Pat. No. 6,286,347.
The first reference (EP 0848779) describes a clutch mechanism for an interconnection for locking, blocking and unblocking of a lock, which can be displaced by an inside handle and also by means of an outside handle via an actuator.
A motor is provided which, by means of a spring shaft, connects with a screw which permits displacement of a drive lever. The drive lever acts on a thrust arm or injector with a spring with pushes the arm outwards. This arm is in turn in contact with another coupling arm capable of being introduced against the action of a spring, and into a slot of a rotating drive disc connected to the arm of the lock. An arched projection has likewise been provided in order to allow the coupling arm to rotate outside of the line of the arm of the injector, a gap existing in the arched projection in order to allow the alignment and engagement between the arms.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,286,347 describes a variant of the above patent in that the arm is connected to an arched transverse member where it supports the coupling arm. In this case, the way in which the coupling arm is pushed in order to be introduced into the slot of the drive disc is via this transverse guide member.
The number of pieces required in these solutions raises problems of dimensioning, and the result is a unit of considerable thickness which projects too much when it is fitted to doors.
Equally, the actual functional requirements of the different pieces means that the unit's application is very limited.
When the lock is operated, the play between the spring of the drive lever and those for the thrust arm and the coupling arm, along with the alignment of these in the gap in the guide member, also raise problems in the stabilization and compacting of the lock, which shows positions that are certainly weakened when the outside handle is displaced.